If you would like to contribute a piece to Iron Words, please click here.
You don’t care when our soldiers are killed.
You don’t care when our elderly are murdered.
You don’t care when our women are raped.
You don’t care when our men are brutally slaughtered.
You don’t care when our children are tortured.
You don’t care when our babies are executed.
It has been nearly two weeks.
Somehow time has managed to crawl by and speed past.
We have been living in a weird alternate reality.
There isn’t any routine. School is still not functional.
Rockets are still falling. My kids discuss how many ‘booms’ they have heard each day.
Us with our wandering stars and souls, Jews,
Candles, kippahs and torah scrolls, Jews.
The only things we have, Hashem and Jerusalem,
Our ancient walls have been ruined again, Jews.
3 November, 2023
On Monday night we had a sliver of light in the darkness.
We rejoiced at the brave rescue of one of the hostages, Ori Megidish, 19 years old, from a Gaza tunnel, by the IDF. A young girl who was taken, is now back with her family, back home.
Together with the four hostages released last week by Hamas (a mom and daughter, both US citizens who were visiting family in Israel and a couple of days later, two elderly women, aged 80 and 85), that makes five hostages out; 242 (by latest count) to go.
A Russian Immigrant once asked Ilhan Omar:
“O Congresswoman, do you have to mar
all things Israeli? Your wrathful tweets
do lack a balanced view of the Near East.”
His pleas ignored, A Russian Immigrant then turned
to the elected whipper-tweeter from Detroit:
“I want to know, Representative Tlaib,
do you rehearse or is it all ad lib?”
The poets of Hamas bemoan the death
of one of their own. Villanelles and sonnets
deny that men from Gaza violated Jewish girls
time and again, in gangs, with rabid zeal. They
call it Zionist “lies” and “smokescreen.” Bloody rhymes
with bloody Jewish bodies.
I am a Jew.
Always have been, always will be.
There was never a moment in my life that I can remember that I had to be taught that, or have it explained to me.
There was never a moment in which I had to wonder, am I an American first or a Jew first? I mean, I knew I was both, but Jew would definitely be the first answer to the question of who I am.
There was never a moment in which I questioned that.
26th October, 2023 I thinkWe got comfortable in this worldI thoughtI saw the world settle into a beautiful placeDangers far away, unreachableUntouchableI thought of it like a cliff hovering over deadly, thrashing waves on top of